In many of my high-school classes, sustainability classes at UBC including Sustainability Marketing, I´ve seen how the meat industry has always been considered as “the bad guy”. The meat industry has been involved in major deforestation worldwide to grow the cattle, chickens, pigs, etc. The meat industry also needs nearly a quarter of the world´s freshwater. 14.5% of the GHG emitted worldwide comes from raising the livestock, which includes methane gas, a gas even more damaging than carbon dioxide.
There are many statistics about how the meat industry is affecting the world and accelerating climate change. Many discussions regarding the allocation of the water, food used to feed the livestock, and the land, to be allocated to people in poverty. Despite all the statistics, all the research involved in how meat affects a human, and all the discussion, the meat consumption is expected to increase nearly 95% by 2050 due to the rise in population and higher incomes among the middle class. However, alternatives to meat has been a trend in the recent years: where fast food companies released their “beyond” burgers, and lab-grown meat was discovered and now being produced.
Big brands such as Tyson is investing in harvesting animal cells instead of raising the actual animal. Cultured meat poses as an alternative to people that want to eat meat, but want to their food to have a lower carbon footprint. However, a recent article by BBC showed how cultured (lab grown) meat may have more implications to climate change than the alternative due to its CO2 emissions. Livestock and the meat industry contribute heavily to climate change, where gases more powerful than carbon dioxide, such as methane, are emitted. The article pointed out that these type of gases only stay in the atmosphere for a dozen years, and then they are gone. Carbon dioxide, on the other hand, can stay for Millenia. So climate change wise, the solution may impact the earth and worsen climate change in the long run.
People that care about the environment are already phasing out meat. Others are trying to eat it a few times a week, and increase their consumption of vegetables. I dont really think that Cultured meat is a good idea to mass produce. The energy it takes to create it and the water use is far to great to be a good alternative to meat and help decrease climate change.
Reference
McGrath, Matt. (19 February 2019). Cultured lab meat may make climate change worse. Retrieved from <https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47283162>
Wow, I didn’t know there were negative impacts of cultured lab meat! I think you brought up some really great points about how a solution to a current problem could create new/different problems.
In our sustainability courses, we always talk about unintended consequences as a result of solutions and I think it’s super important to be mindful of it. I wonder though, don’t you think lab meat is a step in the right direction? I understand that we can’t get rid of all pollution, that’s impossible; however, another big reason meat consumption is under fire is because of the amount of water used in the agriculture industry, and with lab meat, we can eliminate water usage. I don’t know all the negative implications of lab meat, but, perhaps the negative consequences of lab meat are justified if we’re weighing the negatives of both meat vs lab meat.